Rick Calvert

If you search for job openings with the keywords “community manager,” LinkedIn will return over one thousand results. According to Rick Calvert, co-founder of Blogworld and New Media Expo, the popularity of job listings on sites like Linkedin or Monster is an indicator of how bright the future is for social media in corporate America.

“Companies know they need Community Managers,” Calvert says, “because they know they need to engage with their customers in a range of ways through social media, even though they are still learning how to manage those conversations.”

Education remains a primary goal for Calvert and his Blogworld team. “These attendees reach a global audience of over 250 million people.” he pointed out. “Their influence is undeniable.” In an interview conducted halfway through this year’s Blogworld event, held in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay Hotel Conference Center, Calvert indicated that attendance has doubled in the last three years of the conference, but at 3000 attendees, what’s billed as the World’s Largest New Media Conference, is still pretty small given the nearly 200 million blogs that have been created worldwide.

Calvert acknowledged that it is hard for corporate marketers to know what technology platforms will stick with consumers; Calvert admitted even he “missed the point of Twitter at first. I wasn’t sure if it had real value or would turn into FriendFeed.”

Education is why he says he is committed to growing the conference over time. “If we’re lucky, in three to five years we might be able to stop educating people that blogging needs to be part of everyone’s business, like search. In the meantime, bloggers need to learn how to manage and monetize their businesses, and marketers have to understand how to engage with bloggers to serve their customers.”

To aid corporate marketers, Blogworld evolved the previously named Executive and Entrepreneur track into the Social Media Business Summit. The goal of these sessions has been to provide a forum for marketers, media professionals, and business leaders to share experiences and success stories on topics including social media policies, customer relationship management, and crisis communication.

Calvert posits it’s possible that social media could end up “bigger than search,” and speculates that when brands appreciate how to engage with new media content creators they’ll see that blogging is just another marketing communications channel in their mix.

For now, big consumer brands remain under-represented in the exhibition hall of the conference. While Ford, Southwest Airlines, and the US Army had substantial presence as exhibitors, You Tube’s booth was staffed only by two large flat screen monitors playing a looping promotional reel. And despite the fact Calvert’s own blog began on Google’s Blogger platform, he says he still has to do a lot of convincing to get the company to participate in the event.

With consumer adoption of social media tools accelerating, the number of corporate marketers attending the show has also been growing. “It’s not just for bloggers anymore.” Calvert sees the changing mix of attendees as the natural evolution of things. “Bloggers are just content creators,” he said. “And marketers will always need content.”